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Wordpress Blogs SEO - Please Help

I recently got some advice on how to optimize my wordpres blog, as I'm not very technical there are some things I'm not sure about, could you guy's help me please?

Here's what I need to know...

Something called the excerpt function, this is to stop the same content appearing on two pages, I was told to "Replace the_content with the_excerpt in archives, categories, and index. "thecontent" should only exist on single and page"

I don't have a clue on how to do this, I use cpanel file manager, can anyone tell me how to do it in non-tech speak?

I created a google sitemap using the sitemap generator plugin, do I need to place a link to the map on my homepage or is it ok just as it is?

Also, a couple of other things while I'm here, I installed adsense-deluxe plugin but for some reason the adsense is not displaying correctly - look here - homeremedyto.com
Anyone know why?

Plus, if you click on the archives link at the top of the blog, it returns an error msg, that is the way it was from when I installed it, not sure if there's a problem with the theme or if I need to do something?

I don't know if this will do what you hope. Test the pages and see. If you're happy, then great, if not, rename the new files eg. BADindex.php and change OLDindex.php back to index.php
If you look there might be a plugin that does this without requiring hacking the pages.

Plugins can be tricky. Some work with certain versions of WordPress, some are icompatable with certain themes or other plugins.

AFAIK Google can find the file (like it finds robots.txt ?) but you might want to submit it too.

comments

There are different ways to add comments to files. For HTML, when the browser sees "<!--" it considers everything up to "-->" as a comment (still visible in view-source but not rendered). For PHP you can comment several ways. When the PHP parser sees either "//" or "#" it considers everything after that up to the end of the line as a comment. It also considers everything between "/*" and "*/" as a comment. PHP comments are not parsed, and so will not be visible in view-source or be rendered. Depending on your preference you could use something like

HTML Code:

<!-- Original line
<?php the_content(); ?>
--><?php the_excerpt; ?>

HTML Code:

<!-- Original line --><?php # the_content(); ?><!-- New line --><?php the_excerpt; ?>

HTML Code:

<!-- Original line --><?php // the_content(); ?><!-- New line --><?php the_excerpt; ?>

or

HTML Code:

<!-- Original line --><?php /* the_content(); */ ?><!-- New line --><?php the_excerpt; ?>